The Complete On-Board Celestial Navigator, 2007-2011 Edition: Everything But the Sextant Spiral-bound – December 4, 2006

I had the prior version of this book and loved it. However, the tables that are included are only good for about 4 years and my old one was about 2 years out of date. I loved my previous one and used it a lot as I practice to stay "current" relative to celestial navigation. I find that this reference and its self-contained approach is very accessible, easy to use and is surprisingly accurate. I'm glad I'm keeping up with the "current" versions.The service was excellent.

I purchased this book as a gift. The recipient was very excited and said that this is an informative easy read.

I used this book when I was the navigator on board a boat in the 2007 Transpac race, which goes from Long Beach, California to Oaha, Hawaii, and I'll be using it again for the 2011 Transpac. Of course, all boats in these races are using GPS and satellite weather and laptops, but the rules of the race require each navigator to take 4 celestial sights and plot 4 lines of position, presumably as a nod to both safety and sailing history.I'm a child of the GPS era as far as navigating goes, and I had zero knowledge of celestial navigation going into my 2007 race. The advantage of this book is that it has everything you need -- celestial almanac, sight reduction tables, calculation sheets, plotting sheets, and a simple system that ties these components together, all in one compact form. The hardest arithmetic required is addition, and the plotting skills amount to measuring distance on a scale with a pair of calipers, and drawing lines with a straightedge.There are some minor disadvantages. First, to keep the book compact, the accuracy of the celestial almanac has been reduced by a factor of ten. That may sound bad, but in practice, with a crummy sextant and feeble skills, I was able to compute a celestial position within 5 miles of the reported GPS position. It's extremely hard for me to imagine a real-life emergency where I'd need better than that.Second, if you've already learned the standard method for converting celestial sights to lines of position, you can't use it here. In order to get such a compact book, Bennett has done some extremely clever things, but you have to follow his specific algorithm. The book is pretty terse, and sometimes it can be frustrating trying to understand what he wants you to do. It took me forever to understand his explanation of Weir diagrams, after which I realized I didn't need them anyway.If you want to learn the principles of celestial navigation, this book isn't the place to start. But for a practical tool that's compact, easy to use once you understand it, and that will get you home when a rogue wave has smashed through your cockpit door and fried all your electronics, you cannot do better than this.

Not for the beginner. As a compendium of a nautical almanac, it works, as a primer or tutorial, a very poor. The examples are very poorly documented and it is assumed that the reader can decipher the calculation processes. As a starter book, I would look at "Celestial Navigation in a Nutshell" by Hewitt Schlereth instead.

Excellent reference work with everything you need in one place to accompany your sextant. Some subjects are assumed and so if you are just learning, I recommend another book on the basics of the subject to accompany this one. But this one is a must have!